Reference: Watches of the Night
Fausets
The Jews reckoned three military watches: the "first" or beginning of the watches (La 2:19), from sunset to ten o'clock; the second or "middle watch" was from ten until two o'clock (Jg 7:19); the third, "the morning watch," from two to sunrise (Ex 14:24; 1Sa 11:11). Afterward under the Romans they had four watches (Mt 14:25): Lu 12:38, "even, midnight, cockcrowing, and morning" (Mr 13:35); ending respectively at 9 p.m., midnight, 3 a.m., and 6 a.m. (compare Ac 12:4.) Watchmen patrolled the streets (Song 3:3; 5:7; Ps 127:1).
See Verses Found in Dictionary
And during the morning watch, Yahweh looked down to the Egyptian camp [from] in the column of fire and cloud, and he threw the Egyptian camp into a panic.
So Gideon and the hundred men who [were] with him came to the edge of the camp [at] the beginning of the middle night-watch, when they had just finished setting up the guards, and they blew on the trumpets and smashed the jars that [were] in their hands.
Unless Yahweh builds a house, its builders labor at it in vain. Unless Yahweh guards a city, a guard watches in vain.
The sentinels who go about in the city found me. "Have you seen the one whom my {heart} loves?"
The sentinels making rounds in the city found me; they beat me, they wounded me; they took my cloak away from me-- {those sentinels on the walls}!
"Arise, cry out in the night, at the beginning of the night watches; pour out your heart like water, before the face of the Lord. Lift to him your hands, for the life of your children, who faint in starvation, at the head of all streets."
And in the fourth watch of the night he came to them, walking on the sea.
Therefore be on the alert, for you do not know when the master of the house is coming--whether in the evening, or at midnight, or when the rooster crows, or early in the morning--
Even if he should come back in the second or in the third watch of the night and find [them] like this, blessed are they!
[After he] had arrested {him}, he also put [him] in prison, handing [him] over to four squads of soldiers to guard him, intending to bring him {out for public trial} after the Passover.