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 And as for those twain of you who commit it, hurt them both; then, if they repent and amend, turn away from them; verily Allah is Relenting, Merciful. 16 The repentance accepted by Allah is only for those who do wrong in ignorance [or carelessness] and then repent soon after. It is those to whom Allah will turn in forgiveness, and Allah is ever Knowing and 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 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 But if you desire to give up a wife and to take another in her stead, do not take away anything of what you have given the first one, however much it may have been. Would you, perchance, take it away by slandering her and thus committing a manifest sin? 20 How shall you take it, when each of you has been privily with the other, and they have taken from you a solemn compact? 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