If any of your women commit fornication, call in four male witnesses from among yourselves against them; if they testify to their guilt, confine them to the house until death releases them or until God gives them another way out. 15 If two among you commit it punish them both. If they repent and make amends, leave them alone. Allah is the Relenter, the Merciful. 16 With Allah is the repentance of those alone who do an evil foolishly and thereafter repent speedily, surely it is they unto whom Allah shall relent. And Allah is Knowing, Wise. 17 Forgiveness is not for those who continue to do evil deeds until, when death comes upon one of them, he says: "Now I repent!" nor from those who die as deniers of the truth. We have prepared a painful punishment for them. 18 O you who have believed, it is not lawful for you to inherit women by compulsion. And do not make difficulties for them in order to take [back] part of what you gave them unless they commit a clear immorality. And live with them in kindness. For if you dislike them - perhaps you dislike a thing and Allah makes therein much good. 19 If you want to divorce a woman so that you can marry another, do not take back the dowry which you had paid even if what you paid was a large amount of gold. To do this is a slanderous act and a manifest sin. 20 How can you take it when you have been intimate with one another, and she has taken a solemn pledge from you? 21 Do not marry the women whom your fathers married, although what is past is past. This indeed was a shameful deed, a hateful thing, and an evil way. 22