If any of your women is guilty of unnatural offence, bring four of your witnesses to give evidence; if they testify against them, retain them in the houses until death overtakes them or God provides some other way for them. 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 God shall turn only towards those who do evil in ignorance, then shortly repent; God will return towards those; God is All-knowing, All-wise. 17 (Allah will accept) no repentance from those who do evil deeds until death comes to one of them, he says: 'Now I repent' Nor those who die unbelieving. For those We have prepared a painful punishment. 18 O People who Believe! It is not lawful for you to forcibly become the women’s heirs; and do not restrain women with the intention of taking away a part of bridal money you gave them, unless they openly commit the shameful; and deal kindly with them; and if you do not like them, so it is possible that you dislike a thing in which Allah has placed abundant good. 19 But if you desire to give up a wife and to take another in her stead, do not take away anything of what you have given the first one, however much it may have been. Would you, perchance, take it away by slandering her and thus committing a manifest sin? 20 How can ye take it (back) after one of you hath gone in unto the other, and they have taken a strong pledge from you? 21 Do not marry, from now on, the ex-wives of your fathers for that custom was sinful, loathsome, and abominable. 22