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 If two (men) among you are guilty of such acts then punish both of them. But if they repent and reform, let them be, for God accepts repentance and is 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 The forgiveness is not for those who do ill-deeds until, when death attendeth upon one of them, he saith: Lo! I repent now; nor yet for those who die while they are disbelievers. For such We have prepared a painful doom. 18 O believers, you are not allowed to take perforce the women (of dead relatives) into your heritage, or tyrannise over them in order to deprive them of what you have given them, unless they are guilty of open adultery. Live with them with tolerance and justice even if you do not care for them. For it may well be you may not like a thing, yet God may have endued it with much goodness. 19 And if you wish to have (one) wife in place of another and you have given one of them a heap of gold, then take not from it anything; would you take it by slandering (her) and (doing her) manifest wrong? 20 How can you take it when you have been intimate with one another, and she has taken a solemn pledge from you? 21 And wed not of women those whom your fathers had wedded, except that which hath already passed. Verily it hath been an indecency and an abomination and an evil way: 22