וּמִקְצֵ֣ה אֶחָ֔יו לָקַ֖ח חֲמִשָּׁ֣ה אֲנָשִׁ֑ים וַיַּצִּגֵ֖ם לִפְנֵ֥י פַרְעֹֽה׃
And carefully selecting a few of his brothers, he presented them to Pharaoh.
(The above rendering comes from the RJPS translation, an adaptation of the NJPS translation. Before accounting for this rendering, I will analyze the plain sense of the Hebrew term containing אִישׁ—in this case its plural form אֲנָשִׁים—by employing a situation-oriented construal as outlined in this introduction, pp. 11–16.)
The clause is וּמִקְצֵה אֶחָיו לָקַח חֲמִשָּׁה אֲנָשִׁים, which schematically frames a new situation that is defined by its essential participants: a quantified subset (חֲמִשָּׁה אֲנָשִׁים) of a known group (אֶחָיו) is being introduced into the discourse as a distinct entity.
The noun אֲנָשִׁים is not merely a counting unit; it has a discourse function. This fact is made clear in similar cases of אֲנָשִׁים where the new subset is left unquantified (see Test #3: Introducing an Unquantified Subset of a Known Group in my 2022 article “The Noun ’îš in Ancient Hebrew: A Marker of Essential Participation”).
The discourse function of אֲנָשִׁים here is as follows: the ones who are chosen are no longer regarded as אַחִים (“brothers”) but more specifically as אֲנָשִׁים—as participants whose presence is essential for grasping the changed situation.
This is a prototypical usage of אִישׁ as a situating noun. It puts Joseph’s act of selection front-and-center in the mind’s eye of the audience. The point is that he is handling the interaction with care.
Meanwhile, as the late E. A. Speiser pointed out in his Anchor Bible commentary, the word מִקְצֵה (“from among”) underscores Joseph’s selectivity in the choices that he makes.
The referent’s gender is not at issue.
As for rendering into English, the NJPS ‘And selecting a few of his brothers’ omits the point about Joseph’s selectivity. The revised rendering includes it via an adverb, in part as a way to express the situating nuance of אֲנָשִׁים.