Reference: Fuller
American
A cleanser of cloth. His process is unknown. Christ's robes at the transfiguration were white "so as no fuller on earth can white them," Mr 9:3. We read also of fullers' soap, Mal 3:2, and of the fullers' fountain. See EN-ROGEL.
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Easton
The word "full" is from the Anglo-Saxon fullian, meaning "to whiten." To full is to press or scour cloth in a mill. This art is one of great antiquity. Mention is made of "fuller's soap" (Mal 3:2), and of "the fuller's field" (2Ki 18:17). At his transfiguration our Lord's rainment is said to have been white "so as no fuller on earth could white them" (Mr 9:3). En-rogel (q.v.), meaning literally "foot-fountain," has been interpreted as the "fuller's fountain," because there the fullers trod the cloth with their feet.
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Fausets
kobes, from kabas "to tread." The fuller's chief work was cleansing and whitening garments for festive and religious occasions. The white garment typifies Christ's spotless righteousness, put on the saints. Re 3:4-5,18; 6:11; 7:9,14; Ec 9:8, "let thy garments be always white"; the present, even if gloomy, should never rob saints of the festive joyousness of spirit which faith bestows, in consciousness of peace with God now, and in the prospect of glory for ever. Fulling or cleansing cloth was effected by stamping on the garments with the feet or bats in tubs of water containing some alkaline dissolved.
The alkaline substances mentioned are "soap" and "nitre" (Pr 25:20; Jer 2:22), a potash which mixed with oil was used as soap. Mal 3:2, "fullers' soap." Job 9:30, "if I make my hands never so clean," translated, "if I cleanse my hands with lye." Carbonate of potash is obtained impure from burning plants, especially the kali (from whence, with the Arabic al, the article, comes the word "alkali ") of Egypt and Arabia. "Nitre" is not used in our sense, namely, saltpeter, but native carbonate of soda. Natron is found abundant in the soda lakes of Egypt (Pliny, 31:10), in the valley Bahr-bela-ma (the waterless sea), 50 miles E. of Cairo, during the nine months of the year that the lakes are dry.
The Mishna mentions also urine and chalk used in fullers' cleansing. This may have suggested the indelicate filthy sneer of Rabshakeh to Hezekiah's messengers in "the highway of the fullers' field" (2Ki 18:27). The trade was relegated to the outside of Jerusalem, to avoid the offensive smells. (See ENROGEL.) Chalk, or earth of some kind, was used to whiten garments. Christ's garments at the transfiguration became "shining" white "as no fuller on earth could whiten them" (Mr 9:3). Christ's mission, including both the first and second advents, is compared to "fuller's soap" in respect to the judicial process now secretly going on, hereafter to be publicly consummated at the second advent, whereby the unclean are separated from the clean.
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Morish
The word kabas simply implies 'to wash,' as it is often translated, and would include 'bleaching.' The coming of the Lord is compared to a 'refiner's fire, and like fullers' soap,' when the dross and dirt will be cleared away. Mal 3:2. At the transfiguration the clothing of the Lord became so white that it exceeded the whiteness produced by any fuller on earth. Mr 9:3. It was a reflection of heavenly glory.
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Smith
Fuller.
The trade of the fullers, so far as it is mentioned in Scripture, appears to have consisted chiefly in cleansing garments and whitening them. The process of fulling or cleansing clothes consisted in treading or stamping on the garments with the feet or with bats in tubs of water, in which some alkaline substance answering the purpose of soap had been dissolved. The substances used for this purpose which are mentioned in Scripture are natron,
and soap.
Other substances also are mentioned as being employed in cleansing, which, together with alkali, seem to identify the Jewish with the Roman process, as urine and chalk. The process of whitening garments was performed by rubbing into them calk or earth of some kind. Creta cimolia (cimolite) was probably the earth most frequently used. The trade of the fullers, as causing offensive smells, and also as requiring space for drying clothes, appears to have been carried on at Jerusalem outside the city.