וַתָּבֹ֥א הָאִשָּׁ֖ה לִפְנ֣וֹת הַבֹּ֑קֶר וַתִּפֹּ֞ל פֶּ֧תַח בֵּית־הָאִ֛ישׁ אֲשֶׁר־אֲדוֹנֶ֥יהָ שָּׁ֖ם עַד־הָאֽוֹר׃
Toward morning the woman came back; and as it was growing light, she collapsed at the entrance of the very house where her husband was.
(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.)
Prototypically, אִישׁ is used in sketching a situation schematically. Here, it performs its basic function of labeling a referent in terms of the situation of interest: הָאִישׁ is the standard way to point to someone as being the aforementioned salient participant in the situation at hand.
The narrator seems to presuppose that the concubine would not normally be expected to find her way back, after having been abducted in the dark in an unfamiliar neighborhood. The mention of הָאִישׁ again serves as a point of reference to underscore that it was remarkable that she managed to do so. In short, the narration gives the concubine credit for showing up against the odds.
As for rendering into English, the NJPS ‘the man’s house where her husband was’ comes up short by treating the mention of the householder as uninformative. (It adds nothing to a simpler possibility: “the house where her husband was.”) Worse, its redundancy overstates gender, calling more attention to the misogyny of the participants than the text’s composer(s) intended. And still worse, NJPS does not convey the way that אִישׁ is used to imply the woman’s fortitude.
The revised rendering employs the adjective very, which is “used as an intensive especially to emphasize identity” (Merriam-Webster’s dictionary). This expresses the discourse function of אִישׁ here (making reference in terms of the previously depicted situation) without making an issue of gender.