AND AS FOR those of your women who become guilty of immoral conduct, call upon four from among you who have witnessed their guilt; and if these bear witness thereto, confine the guilty women to their houses until death takes them away or God opens for them a way [through repentance]. 15 Punish both of those among you who are guilty of this sin, then if they repent and mend their ways, leave them alone. For Allah is always ready to accept repentance. He is All-Compassionate. 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! it is not allowed unto you that ye may heir the women forcibly; nor shut them up that ye may take away from them part of that which ye had given them, except when they be guilty of manifest enormity. And live with them reputably; if ye detest them, belike ye detest a thing and yet Allah hath placed therein abundant good. 19 But if you want to replace one wife with another and you have given one of them a great amount [in gifts], do not take [back] from it anything. Would you take it in injustice and manifest sin? 20 And how could ye take it when ye have gone in unto each other, and they have Taken from you a solemn covenant? 21 And do not marry women that your fathers married, unless it be a thing of the past; surely that is indecent and hateful; an evil way. 22