If any of your women commit indecency, call in four witnesses from among yourselves against them, if they testify, confine them to their houses till death overtakes them or till Allah makes for them a way. 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 But God undertakes to accept repentance only from those who do evil out of ignorance and those who repent soon after. God turns towards such people with mercy; He is all knowing and all wise. 17 And of no effect is the repentance of those who continue to do evil deeds until death faces one of them and he says: "Now I repent;" nor of those who die while they are disbelievers. For them We have prepared a painful torment. 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 ye wish to exchange one wife for another and ye have given unto one of them a sum of money (however great), take nothing from it. Would ye take it by the way of calumny and open wrong? 20 And how could you take it away after you have given yourselves to one another, and she has received a most solemn pledge 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