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.

92. Other prostitutes who could steal men by tricks unknown in the world, driving them into their proprium by praises and by drowning their minds in themselves; and because the men were then without protection from the Lord, they were attracted to these women these women were cast into a place as it were burning with brimstone and fire, or so it appeared. They lived in the south-west region; and similar men were cast into a gloomy abyss close under the lake of the women. The women bewitch men, and the men women, by diabolical tricks, which are numerous. It is not permitted to enumerate them.