If any of your women commit fornication, call in four male witnesses from among yourselves against them; if they testify to their guilt, confine them to the house until death releases them or until God gives them another way out. 15 If any two people commit fornication, punish them. If they repent and reform, let them go. God is All-forgiving and All-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 And repentance is not for those who go on working evil until when death presenteth itself unto one of them, and he saith: verily now I repent; nor for those who die while they are infidel. These! for them We have gotten ready a torment afflictive. 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 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 How can you take it away after each one has enjoyed the other, and they have taken a firm covenant from you? 21 Do not marry, from now on, the ex-wives of your fathers for that custom was sinful, loathsome, and abominable. 22