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 (Allah accepts) the repentance from only those who commit evil in ignorance and then quickly turn to Him in repentance. Allah will relent towards them. Allah is Knowing, Wise. 17 There is no forgiveness for those who commit sin and do not repent until the last moment of their lives nor for those who die as unbelievers. For these people We have prepared a painful torment. 18 Believers, it is unlawful for you to inherit women forcefully, neither bar them, in order that you go off with part of what you have given them, except when they commit a clear indecency. Live with them honorably. If you hate them, it may be that you hate something which Allah has set in it much good. 19 And if you wish to have (one) wife in place of another and you have given one of them a heap of gold, then take not from it anything; would you take it by slandering (her) and (doing her) manifest wrong? 20 How can you take it away after each one has enjoyed the other, and they have taken a firm covenant from you? 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