Mark 9:3 - "And his garments became glistening, intensely white, as no fuller on earth could bleach them."

We are so used to seeing laundry trucks going up and down our streets and taking dirty laundry away and bringing back clean clothing; we are properly impressed with the enterprise of the young GI’s of World War II who thought up the diaper services; we take automatic washers and dryers so much for granted; perhaps we would do well to stop for a moment and think about those who used to be sent out of the city to do their cleansing work - because they smelled! Puts us in mind of Dogpatch’s "inside man at the skonk works!" That’s about the way people felt about fullers! Nice people, you know, but - phew!

The fuller was the ancient equivalent of our laundryman. He was responsible for cleaning, thickening and bleaching cloth. Fortunately, his work required plenty of running water, so that he had to do his work outside of the city walls. But, even in places where there was an adequate supply of water within the gates - OUT!

And not only did he have this social stigma on him - the work was hard! First, the fuller put the material he was working with into hot water, to which the ashes of borith (an alkaline salt) were added. He then cleansed it by stamping on it with his feet and by beating it with metal instruments. While all this was going on, he also had to scrape the material to remove any foreign materials, dirt, etc. The final state then was bleaching in the sun.

After the material had gone through this treatment, the natural oils in it were cleaned away, and the material was ready to be used (if white was desired), or to be dyed. The fuller then became a dyer also. There is also the strong probability that he often traded in textiles as well.

We find mention of the Fuller’s Field in 2 Kings 18:17, which was a field in which these various processes were carried out. Eventually, in spite of their rather malodorous occupation, the fullers organized, and we find mention of a fuller’s guild in Pompeii.

Although today we expect no more of our laundry man than that he remove dirt for us, in the Old Testament the concept of a fuller’s cleansing is more wide-ranging. In Psalm 51 and in several places in the Book of Jeremiah we find references to the metaphorical use of the fuller’s cleansing in regard to persons who are cleansed of evil.

In referring to our text, we may say that white garments were used for religious festivals, and they required special cleansing, the fuller’s province. This, then, is the description of the supernatural appearance of the Lord - no matter how expert and skilled in his trade, no fuller could make garments shine so brightly as those which adorned the transfigured Christ.