AND AS FOR those of your women who become guilty of immoral conduct, call upon four from among you who have witnessed their guilt; and if these bear witness thereto, confine the guilty women to their houses until death takes them away or God opens for them a way [through repentance]. 15 Punish both of those among you who are guilty of this sin, then if they repent and mend their ways, leave them alone. For Allah is always ready to accept repentance. He is All-Compassionate. 16 God will only accept the repentance of those who commit evil in ignorance, if they repent immediately. God is All-knowing and All-wise. 17 And repentance is not for those who go on working evil until when death presenteth itself unto one of them, and he saith: verily now I repent; nor for those who die while they are infidel. These! for them We have gotten ready a torment afflictive. 18 Believers, it is not lawful for you to inherit women against their will, nor should you detain them wrongfully, so that you may take away a part of what you have given them, unless they are guilty of something clearly outrageous. Live with them in accordance with what is fair and kind; if you dislike them, it may be that you dislike something which God might make a source of abundant good. 19 But if you intend to replace a wife by another and you have given one of them a Cantar (of gold i.e. a great amount) as Mahr, take not the least bit of it back; would you take it wrongfully without a right and (with) a manifest sin? 20 And how can you take it when one of you has already gone in to the other and they have made with you a firm covenant? 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