Verse 7 in Hebrew has a bracketing structure in which earth and foundations … of the mountains are enclosed at the beginning by reeled and rocked and at the end by trembled and quaked. The four verbs are similar in meaning, and the relation between the lines is relatively static, except for the earth being replaced by the more literary foundations … of the mountains.

This verse begins with a connective showing that the action is in response to a previous one, Then. It is important in translation to mark this connective, since it signals the start of a process which will continue probably until the end of verse 24.

The long description of Yahweh’s coming (verses 7-15) employs the kind of language associated with Yahweh’s appearance to his people on Mount Sinai (Exo 19.16-19; see also Judges 5.4-5; Psa 29.4-9; 144.5-6). The first picture is that of an earthquake, and there is a good alliterative effect in Hebrew, “the earth tigʿash and tirʿash,” which some translations try to reproduce: Revised Standard Version, Dahood reeled and rocked; Knox “shivered and shook”; Traduction œcuménique de la Bible “se trouble et trembla”; Die Bibel im heutigen Deutsch “wankte und schwankte.” In some languages an earth tremor is expressed idiomatically as “the mountain roared” or “the volcano snored.”

The foundations … of the mountains: it was thought that the mountains reached down to and rested upon the depths of the earth, the world of the dead. So Dahood takes earth in line a to refer to Sheol. The foundations also of the mountains may sometimes be rendered as “where the mountains sit” or “the legs of the mountains.”

The verb translated trembled occurs also in 4.4a (see comments there on “Be angry”); and quaked translates the same verb translated reeled in line a.

Quoted with permission from Bratcher, Robert G. and Reyburn, William D. A Handbook on the Book of Psalms. (UBS Helps for Translators). New York: UBS, 1991. For this and other handbooks for translators see here .