243. The third living creature had a face like a human being. This symbolizes the Divine truth of the Word in respect to its wisdom.

A human being in the Word symbolizes wisdom, because the human being was born to receive wisdom from the Lord and become an angel. The wiser someone is, therefore, the more human he is. True human wisdom consists in perceiving the existence of God, the nature of God, and what pertains to God. This is what the Divine truth of the Word teaches.

That a human being symbolizes wisdom is apparent from the following passages:

I will make a man more rare than fine gold, and a human being more rare than the gold of Ophir. (Isaiah 13:12)

A man means intelligence, and a human being wisdom.

...the inhabitants of the earth shall be burned up, and rare will be the human being left. (Isaiah 24:6)

...I will sow the house of Israel and the house of Judah with the seed of a human being and the seed of an animal. (Jeremiah 31:27)

You are My flock...; you are humankind, I am your God. (Ezekiel 34:31)

...the ruined cities shall be filled with a flock of humankind. (Ezekiel 36:38)

I looked upon the earth when, lo, it was empty and void, and to the heavens when they had not their light... I looked when, lo, there was no human being... (Jeremiah 4:23, 25)

They sacrifice a human being, they kiss the calves. (Hosea 13:2)

He measured the wall (of the Holy Jerusalem): one hundred and forty-four cubits, the measure of a human being, which is that of an angel. (Revelation 21:17)

So, too, in many other places, where a human being symbolizes someone who is wise, and in an abstract sense, wisdom itself.

4564. 'And was buried below Bethel under an oak' means cast away for ever. This is clear from the meaning of 'being buried' as being cast away, for that which is buried is cast away; and from the meaning of 'under an oak' as for ever, dealt with above in 4552. 'Below Bethel' means outside the natural, for that which is said to be beneath or below is in the internal sense outside, 2148; 'Bethel' is the Divine Natural 4089, 4539.

[2] The implication of this is that with a person who is being regenerated, neither hereditary evil nor that of his own doing is removed in such a way as to disappear or be eliminated, but is merely separated and through the rearrangement effected by the Lord is cast away to the most outlying parts, 4551, 4552. It accordingly remains with that person, and does so for ever, but he is withheld from evil by the Lord and maintained in good. When this happens it seems as though evils have been cast away and the person has been purified from them or, as it is said, made righteous. All the angels of heaven confess that in their case, insofar as anything originates in themselves it is entirely evil and consequently false, but insofar as it originates in the Lord it is good and consequently true.

[3] People who have adopted any other notion concerning this matter, and who from the teaching they received while living in the world have become convinced that they have been made righteous and are in that case without sins, and so are holy, are taken back to the state where their evils reigned - both those of their own doing and those received through heredity. They are then kept in that state until they know from personal experience that of themselves they are nothing but evil and the good which had seemed to them to be their own came from the Lord, and that therefore it was not theirs but the Lord's. This is the situation with angels, as it is with the regenerate among men.

[4] But in the Lord's case it was different. He entirely removed, cast out, and cast away from Himself all hereditary evil from His mother, for being conceived from Jehovah He had no evil by heredity from His Father, only from His Mother. This is the difference; and this is what is meant by the Lord's being made Righteousness, the Holy itself, and the Divine.