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.

5569. Just as there is a correspondence of the bones and skin, so there is also a correspondence of the hairs on the body; for hairs come up out of roots in the skin. Whatever is part of the correspondence with the Grand Man exists with spirits and angels; for each one is related to the Grand Man as an image of the same. Angels therefore have hair, neatly and tidily arranged; their hair represents their natural life and the correspondence of this with their spiritual life. For 'the hair' or 'hairs' means the strands of one's natural life, see 3301, while 'cutting one's hair' means attending to natural things so as to make them tidy and so attractive, 5247.