if you were living in the hebrew's days, and you spoke of the 'soul', the likely hood is that you were talking about your own life
The idea of a “soul” came into being only after the reality of resurrection began to enter Jewish thought.
lol - if it were much before 200 B.C.E the likely hood is that you were talking gibberish.
Even then it is not nefesh, but neshama, that becomes the term for soul.
I suppose it depends how far back in the days you were ...
One Love
Mercy Trumps Judgement,
Love Weary
The Apostle of the Skeptics writes:
"...picture me alone in that room ... night after night, feeling ... the steady, unrelenting approach of Him
whom I so earnestly desired not to meet. That which I greatly feared had at last come upon me."
™ Version 4.2