As for those of your women who are guilty of immoral conduct, call upon four from amongst you to bear witness against them. And if four men do bear witness, confine those women to their houses until either death takes them away or Allah opens some way for them. 15 And as for the two of you who are guilty thereof, punish them both. And if they repent and improve, then let them be. Lo! Allah is ever relenting, Merciful. 16 The repentance accepted by Allah is only for those who do wrong in ignorance [or carelessness] and then repent soon after. It is those to whom Allah will turn in forgiveness, and Allah is ever Knowing and Wise. 17 But God shall not turn towards those who do evil deeds until, when one of them is visited by death, he says, 'Indeed now I repent,' neither to those who die disbelieving; for them We have prepared a painful chastisement. 18 O believers, it is not lawful for you to inherit women against their will; neither debar them, that you may go off with part of what you have given them, except when they commit a flagrant indecency Consort with them honourably; or if you are averse to them, it is possible you may be averse to a thing, and God set in it much good. 19 And if you wish to change one wife for another and you have given her heaps of treasure, do not take back anything from it; will you take it back by slander and open sin? 20 And how can ye take it back when one of you hath gone in unto the other, and they have obtained from you a rigid bond! 21 And do not wed the women your fathers had wed. What happened in the past is now past: It was lewd and abhorrent, and only the way of evil. 22