שְׂא֞וּ אֶת־רֹ֣אשׁ ׀ כׇּל־עֲדַ֣ת בְּנֵי־יִשְׂרָאֵ֗ל מִבֶּ֨ן עֶשְׂרִ֥ים שָׁנָ֛ה וָמַ֖עְלָה לְבֵ֣ית אֲבֹתָ֑ם כׇּל־יֹצֵ֥א צָבָ֖א בְּיִשְׂרָאֵֽל׃
“Take a census of the whole Israelite community from the age of twenty years up, by their ancestral houses, all Israelite [males] able to bear arms.”
(The above rendering comes from the RJPS translation, an adaptation of the NJPS translation. It incorporates a slight change that is proposed for late Fall 2024.)
The indefinite grammatically masculine participial phrase יֹצֵא צָבָא “[who are] going out in [battle] array” is used here to refer to a nonspecific category of persons: all those who meet the stated criteria are to be counted. Thus their social gender is not grammatically specified (except as not solely womanly).
That being said, the gender of the group is nonetheless restricted by the nature of the activity in question. For the first census that was mentioned in Numbers, the assignment as spelled out in 1:2–3 was to make a count of כָּל־זָכָר “every male” who would meet the qualifications of age and of able body (for warfare). Here, a generation later, for the second census, maleness is not explicitly specified as a condition. Apparently the ancient audience was expected to recall that specification—as reinforced by the general knowledge that in the ancient Near East, warfare was the domain of men (a gender category that in some ancient Near Eastern societies, as Assyriologist Kate McCaffrey’s work suggests, appears to have included a class of females who lived as men and were referred to via masculine pronouns). Thus the text’s composer(s) could have relied upon the ancient Israelite audience to believe that the topic excludes women from view.
Regarding translation, the NJPS rendering “all Israelites able to bear arms” may well be too vague regarding the restricted gender in view. Contemporary readers are not likely to be familiar with the nuances of the first census. Furthermore, both the military and a census are nowadays gender-inclusive settings, which might prompt today’s readers to construe the phrase “all Israelites” inclusively.
Where gender is germane and not otherwise immediately evident, English idiom expects a gender marker upon first use. Therefore, in order for the present audience to perceive the passage’s plain sense as the ancient audience would have done, I make the maleness explicit. A new insertion in square brackets evokes 1:2.