Rabbi Roodyn

ז) יֵבֹשׁוּ כָּל עֹבְדֵי פֶסֶל הַמִּתְהַלְלִים בָּאֱלִילִים הִשְׁתַּחֲווּ לוֹ כָּל אֱלֹהִים:

All worshippers of graven images will be ashamed, yea those who boast of idols; all gods, prostrate yourselves before Him.

Rav Hirsch simply explains this pasuk as saying that once the truth has become clear, then no form of idolatry shall ever again have a hold over the human heart. He claims that the terms pesel and elil refer to two distinct types of idolatry. The term pesel refers to physical forms and elil refers to ideological ones.

The contemporary world is made up of those who worship things and those who worship ideas. We find ourself in the middle of the tension between the western world that ‘worships’ materialism and the world of fundamentalism that places certain ‘ideas’ above all else. It seems as if the world is being pulled in two different directions at the same time, causing a huge amount of tension and conflict.

Our pasuk is telling us that everything that man had previously worshipped until now will lie prostrate before the One G-d.