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.

5071. The reason why the expression 'cursed' is used of those on the left and why their punishment is called 'eternal fire' in the following statements -'Then He will also say to those on the left, Depart from Me, O cursed ones, into eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels' and 'these will go away into eternal punishment' - is that they have turned away from good and truth and have turned towards evil and falsity. 'Cursing' in the internal sense of the Word means a turning away, 245, 379, 1427, 3570, 3584. The eternal fire into which they were to depart is not material fire, nor is it a tormented conscience, but a craving for evil. For cravings like this in a person are spiritual fires which consume him during the life of the body and torment him in the next life. Because of these fires burning within them, the inhabitants of hell use dreadful methods to torture one another.

[2] Eternal fire is clearly not material fire; and the reason it is not a tormented conscience is that none who are governed by evil have any conscience; and those who have had no conscience during their lifetime cannot have any in the next life. But the reason eternal fire is a craving is that the entire fire of life in a person is fuelled by his loves, a heavenly fire by the love of what is good and true, a hellish fire by the love of what is evil and false. Or what amounts to the same, a heavenly fire is fuelled by love to the Lord and love towards the neighbour, and a hellish fire by self-love and love of the world. Anyone can see, if he stops to think, that all the fire or heat burning within a person is fuelled by his loves. This also explains why love is called spiritual heat and why in the Word fire and heat have no other meaning, 934 (end), 1297, 1527, 1528, 1861, 2446, 4906. The fire of life in the evil is also such that when they feel very strong cravings, a kind of fire is also burning in them, which inflames them with an intense and furious desire to torment others. But the fire of life in the good is such that when a higher level of affection exists with them, a kind of fire is alight in them too. But this fire inflames them with a loving and zealous desire to do good to others.