Комментарий о цитате к Тегилим 29:8

וישב העם בקדש, ‘the people settled in Kadesh.” Kadesh is the name of a town. The desert Tzin mentioned in our verse is also referred to in the list of all the points where the Israelites made camp in Parshat Massey. (33,36). The “Kadesh” mentioned here is not the same as the “Kadesh-Barneiah” mentioned there. We must not confuse the desert of Tzin with the desert Sin, a word spelled with the letter ס. That wilderness is situated between Eylim and Mount Sinai. Psalms 29,8 mentions יחיל ה' מדבר קדש, “the Lord convulses the wilderness of Kadesh.” Numbers 33,11-15 enumerates 5 way stations between the desert of Sin and the desert of Sinai.

וישאו בני ישראל את עיניהם...ויצעקו בני ישראל אל ה', “the Children of Israel raised their eyes....and they cried out to Hashem.” The Torah tells us that they fell back on a tried remedy, i.e. prayer, which had helped their forefathers in times of distress. We know that Avraham prayed from Genesis 19,27 where the Torah describes him as rising early in the morning “to the place, etc.” The words “to the place” are a euphemism for someone directing his prayer to G’d. We find similarly that Yitzchak was praying in Genesis 24,43 where the Torah describes him as coming from a שיחה, i.e. a prayer-session. We find that the Torah describes Yaakov as having prayed at the place where he had the dream of the ladder (Genesis 8,11). The reason the Jewish people have been compared to a worm (Isaiah 41,14 “do not fear worm Yaakov, etc.”) is that just as a worm has no strength of its own other than that of its mouth with which it is able to defeat the mighty cedars, so the strength of the Jewish people is their mouth, i.e. the power of their prayers. Prayer is something soft which has the power to break something hard. The Gentiles have been compared to cedars as we know from Ezekiel 31,3: “here Assyria used to be a cedar in Lebanon,” etc., etc. In verse 12 the prophet describes how this magnificent tree was cut down.” Psalms 29,8 also describes the forests being stripped bare (by the worms). Israel’s victories are due to prayer and Torah. We base this on Deut. 4,29: “when you will seek out the Lord your G’d from there (your state of distress) you will find Him.” We have a similar message in Psalms 20,8: “they (call) on chariots, they (call) on horses, but we call on the name of the Lord our G’d.”

מקדש אל מלך אדום, “from Kadesh to the king of Edom.” The Torah means the town Kadesh, as opposed to Kadesh-Barneya. The latter is not a town but a desert as we know from Psalms 28,8 יחיל ה' מדבר קדש, “the Lord convulses the wilderness of Kadesh.” I have already mentioned this previously