Albert Barnes Commentary Psalms 29:8

"The voice of Jehovah shaketh the wilderness; Jehovah shaketh the wilderness of Kadesh." — Psalms 29:8 (ASV)

Shakes the wilderness - Causes it to shake or to tremble. The word used here means properly to dance; to be whirled or twisted upon anything; to twist—as with pain—or, to writhe; and then, to tremble, to quake. The forests are made to tremble or quake in the fierceness of the storm—referring still to what the thunder seems to do.

The wilderness of Kadesh - As in referring (Psalms 29:5–6) to the effect of the storm on lofty trees, the psalmist had given poetic beauty to the description by specifying Lebanon and Sirion, so he here refers, for the same purpose, to a particular forest as illustrating the power of the tempest—namely, the forest or wilderness of Kadesh.

This wilderness or forest was on the southeastern border of the promised land, toward Edom. It is memorable as having been the place where the Israelites twice encamped with a view of entering Palestine from that point, but from which they were twice driven back again: the first time following the sentence that they should wander forty years in the wilderness, and the second time from the refusal of the king of Edom to allow them to pass through his territories. It was from Kadesh that the spies entered Palestine (see Numbers 13:17, 26; 14:40-45; 21:1-3; Deuteronomy 1:41–46; Judges 1:7).

Kadesh was on the northern border of Edom, and not far from Mount Hor (see Robinson’s Biblical Researches in Palestine, vol. ii, pp. 582, 610, 662; Kitto, Cyclo-Bib. in the article, “Kadesh; ” and the Pictorial Bible on Numbers 20:1). There seems to have been nothing special regarding this wilderness that led the author of the psalm to select it for his illustration, except that it was well known and commonly spoken of, and that it would thus suggest an image that would be familiar to the Israelites.