אַחֲרֵ֣י נִמְכַּ֔ר גְּאֻלָּ֖ה תִּהְיֶה־לּ֑וֹ אֶחָ֥ד מֵאֶחָ֖יו יִגְאָלֶֽנּוּ׃
[your kin] shall have the right of redemption even afterward. [Typically,] a brother shall do the redeeming,…
(The above rendering comes from the RJPS translation—an adaptation of the NJPS translation—including a correction that is proposed for late 2024.)
Women are not excluded from view in this passage. The Bible mentions (matter-of-factly, in one case) women who had a stable economic base of their own and thus could have been wealthy enough to help out their poor kin (Josh 17:3–6; Judg 17:2 [cf. 17:10]; 2 Kgs 8:5–6; Job 42:15). Women of means were also attested in the ancient Near Eastern milieu across many times and places (see, e.g., Rivkah Harris, “Independent Women in Ancient Mesopotamia?”; Zafrira Ben-Barak, “Inheritance by Daughters in the Ancient Near East” and “Mutual Influences in the Ancient Near East: Inheritance…”; Eryl W. Davies, “Inheritance Rights…”; Maynard Maidman, “The Role of Free Women in the Economy of Nuzi…”).
Did a wealthy woman have an incentive to help a poorer relation? Yes, because the ancient Israelites considered it a prime familial objective to keep ownership of a patrimony within an extended family. The Torah explicitly expects women to serve their (husband’s) family’s landholding interests (Num 36; Deut 25:5–10). Baruch Levine brings the point home at Num 5:8 (Anchor Bible commentary, emphasis added): “In the biblical system of inheritance, one’s heirs were [one’s] clan relatives.… According to Lev. 25:48–49, one’s clan relatives … included … ‘flesh’ relatives [which] are, in turn, listed in Lev. 21:2. They include one’s mother, father, son, daughter, and brother. The females in this list would not normally inherit property, but they would when male heirs were lacking.” Likewise, such women might be in a position to help another relative in straits.
Taking such evidence together, the plain sense of the text’s enumeration of “brother, uncle, male first cousin” appears to present the typical priority of responsibility, without excluding women from the universe of potential redeemers.
As for rendering into English, the NJPS “he shall have the right.… one of his kinsmen shall redeem him” nowadays sounds unduly masculine with regard to both roles: the poverty-stricken relative and the redeemer.
Furthermore, the NJPS rendering of this passage (“One of his kinsmen … or his uncle or his uncle’s son … or anyone of his family”) is self-contradictory, for in fact “kinsmen” logically includes those who follow in the list. Although אָח has otherwise been rendered as “kin” in this chapter, here its narrowest sense as “brother” fits better—yielding a chain of progressively distant relations: brother, uncle, male first cousin, anyone of the same “flesh.”
Unlike the ancient audience, contemporary readers tend not to imagine that women were part of the picture. The revised rendering therefore supplies a clarifying insertion that allows for their participation: “[Typically,] a brother….”