midnight
But Hosea had not yet sued for her . `` By the red god Seth , and his seventy companions , '' he added wrathfully , `` neither you , nor any one shall induce me to offer my daughter , who has twenty suitors , to a man who terms himself our friend , yet finds no leisure to greet us in our own house ! To keep fast hold of the lad is another thing , I will see to that . '' The midnight heavens , decked with countless stars , spanned with their cloudless azure vault the flat plains of the eastern Delta and the city of Succoth , called by the Egyptians , from their sanctuary , the place of the god Tum , or Pithom . The March night was drawing toward its end , pallid mists floated over the canal , the work of Hebrew bondmen which , as far as the eye could reach , intersected the plain , watering the fields and pastures along its course . Eastward and southward the sky was shrouded by dense veils of mist that rose from the large lakes and from the narrow estuaries that ran far up into the isthmus . The hot and dusty desert wind , which the day before had swept over the parched grass and the tents and houses of Succoth , had subsided at nightfall ; and the cool atmosphere which in March , even in Egypt , precedes the approach of dawn , made itself felt .