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 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 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 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 O ye who believe! Ye are forbidden to inherit women against their will. Nor should ye treat them with harshness, that ye may Take away part of the dower ye have given them,-except where they have been guilty of open lewdness; on the contrary live with them on a footing of kindness and equity. If ye take a dislike to them it may be that ye dislike a thing, and Allah brings about through it a great deal of good. 19 And if you desire to exchange a wife in place of another, and you have given to one a hundredweight, take of it nothing. What, will you take it by way of calumny and manifest sin? 20 And how could you take it while you have gone in unto each other and they have taken from you a solemn covenant? 21 AND DO NOT marry women whom your fathers have previously married - although what is past is past: this, verily, is a shameful deed, and a hateful thing, and an evil way. 22