Afflictors become head after sins against the prophets

The clarity of the wording is somehow such. Certain ones were afflicting the Judean country—or at least wanted to afflict—before the times of the captivity, but they did not master while God was shielding the Jews, when those were rendering themselves worthy of help. But when they sinned and, in addition to not hearing the prophets, the sons of Israel were even killing them, then they were handed over subject to the afflictors, so that their enemies became head—that is, as Symmachus interpreted, rulers. And others, perhaps besides the afflictors, being enemies either in conception or also in substance, were in prosperity, those abandoned because of the sins having become subject to the afflictors—the Lord having humbled the lawbreakers because of the multitude of the impieties, and having done this to such a degree that not even for their infants was mercy left, but that they went in captivity, driven by every afflictor.