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 men commit a like abomination, punish them both. If they repent and mend their ways, leave them alone. God is forgiving and merciful. 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 that repentance is not of those who constantly commit sins, and when death approaches one of them, he says, “I repent now”, nor of those who die as disbelievers; for them, We have kept prepared a painful punishment. 18 Believers! It is not lawful for you to become heirs to women against their will. It is not lawful that you should put constraint upon them that you may take away anything of what you have given them; (you may not put constraint upon them) unless they are guilty of brazenly immoral conduct. Live with your wives in a good manner. If you dislike them in any manner, it may be that you dislike something in which Allah has placed much good for you. 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 How can you take it away after each one has enjoyed the other, and they have taken a firm covenant from you? 21 And marry not women whom your fathers married,- except what is past: It was shameful and odious,- an abominable custom indeed. 22