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 If any two people commit fornication, punish them. If they repent and reform, let them go. God is All-forgiving and All-merciful. 16 Undoubtedly the repentance which Allah has by His grace made obligatory upon Himself to accept, is only the repentance of those who commit sin in folly and then soon repent – towards them does Allah incline in mercy; and Allah is the All Knowing, the Wise. 17 Of no effect is the repentance of those who continue to do evil, until death faces one of them, and he says, "Now have I repented indeed;" nor of those who die rejecting Faith: for them have We prepared a punishment most grievous. 18 Believers, it is unlawful for you to inherit women forcefully, neither bar them, in order that you go off with part of what you have given them, except when they commit a clear indecency. Live with them honorably. If you hate them, it may be that you hate something which Allah has set in it much 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 could you do that having slept with one another, and when they had taken a solemn pledge from you? 21 And do not marry women your fathers married unless it is a thing of the past; surely that was an indecency, hated, and a way of evil. 22