Such of your women as commit indecency, call four of you to witness against them; and if they witness, then detain them in their houses until death takes them or God appoints for them a way. 15 And punish [thus] both of the guilty parties; but if they both repent and mend their ways, leave them alone: for, behold, God is an acceptor of repentance, a dispenser of grace. 16 Verily, God's acceptance of repentance relates only to those who do evil out of ignorance and then repent before their time runs out: and it is they unto whom God will turn again in His mercy - for God is all-knowing, 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 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 want to replace one wife with another and you have given one of them a great amount [in gifts], do not take [back] from it anything. Would you take it in injustice and 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 And marry not women whom your fathers married,- except what is past: It was shameful and odious,- an abominable custom indeed. 22