Translations
Then the waters had overwhelmed us, the stream had gone over our soul:
then the waters would have overwhelmed us—the torrent swept over our nephesh;
then the floodwaters would have swept us away, the torrent surging over our very being;
then the floods would have engulfed us, then the torrent would have overwhelmed us,
Footnotes
Nephesh appears twice in vv. 4–5. Its primary meaning is throat or gullet before expanding to encompass the whole living being, life, and self. Water surging "over the nephesh" is therefore doubly vivid: it swamps the very organ of breath and swallowing. F.O.G. preserves nephesh untranslated to honor its full semantic range and to set up the echo in v.7; F.O.G.M. renders it "very being" to draw out the existential freight.

