334. 'As a fig-tree shaken by a great wind casts its unripe figs' signifies by means of the reasonings of the natural man separated from the spiritual. It is said that they signify, when yet there is a comparison, because all the comparisons in the Word are likewise correspondences, and in the spiritual sense they harmonise with the fact treated of, as here in like manner. For 'a fig', as a result of correspondence, signifies man's natural good conjoined with his spiritual good. Here, however, in the opposite sense [it signifies] a man's natural good separated from his spiritual good, and this is not good; and because the natural man separated from the spiritual perverts by reasonings the cognitions of good and truth, which are signified by the stars, it follows that this is signified by a 'fig-tree shaken by a great wind'. That reasoning is signified by 'wind' and 'tempest' is plain from many places in the Word, but there is no need to adduce them here, because there is a comparison. 'A fig-tree' signifies a man's natural good because every tree signifies something of the Church with a man, thus also the man in regard to it. These [passages] are in confirmation:-
All the host of heaven shall fall down, as the leaf falls off from the vine, and as it falls off the fig-tree Isa. xxxiv 4.
I will consume them, no grapes on the vine, nor figs on the fig-tree, and the leaf shall glide down Jer. viii 13.
All thy fortifications, as fig-trees with the first-fruits, which if they be shaken, shall fall down into the mouth of the eater Nahum iii 12;
besides other places, as Isa. xxxviii 21; Jer. xxiv 2, 3, 5, 8; xxix 17, 18; Hosea ii 12; ix 10; Joel i 7, 12; Zech. iii 10; Matt. xxi 18-21; xxiv 32, 33; Mark xi 12-14, 19-26; Luke vi 44; xiii 6-9; in which places nothing else is understood by 'a fig-tree'.
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