Such of your women as commit indecency, call four of you to witness against them; and if they witness, then detain them in their houses until death takes them or God appoints for them a way. 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 Verily, God's acceptance of repentance relates only to those who do evil out of ignorance and then repent before their time runs out: and it is they unto whom God will turn again in His mercy - for God is all-knowing, wise; 17 Forgiveness is not for those who continue to do evil deeds until, when death comes upon one of them, he says: "Now I repent!" nor from those who die as deniers of the truth. We have prepared a painful punishment for them. 18 O YOU who have attained to faith! It is not lawful for you to [try to] become heirs to your wives [by holding onto them] against their will; and neither shall you keep them under constraint with a view to taking away anything of what you may have given them, unless it be that they have become guilty, in an obvious manner, of immoral conduct. And consort with your wives in a goodly manner; for if you dislike them, it may well be that you dislike something which God might yet make a source of abundant good. 19 But if ye decide to take one wife in place of another, even if ye had given the latter a whole treasure for dower, Take not the least bit of it back: Would ye take it by slander and 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 Do not marry women whom your fathers married, except for what has already taken place in the past. This is indeed a shameful deed, a loathsome thing and an evil practice. 22