In general, trees represent the deepest and most significant intellectual concepts: the ones that come to us most directly from the Lord. This varies depending on us and our states: the people of the Most Ancient Church, who were in a state of loving the Lord, understood truth automatically and internally through what the Writings call "perception"; people in lower states (including most of us) have to work a little harder to learn it from the Word and by willing to follow the Lord. In other parts of the Bible, especially in the prophets and New Testament parables, the meaning of "tree" is broader, meaning not just a person's intellectual concepts but the whole person.

'Trees,' as in Joel 1:10-12, signify knowledges.

93. Those who are spiritually adulterous are distinguished from those who are naturally adulterous. The latter, if they have taken pleasure in adulteries and no pleasure in marriages are shut out of heaven and are sent to hells. But the spiritually adulterous, although they feel there is nothing in adulteries which is not allowed, are all the same examined, and some are reformed; others are given places in accordance with their lives.