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 And as for the two of you who are guilty thereof, punish them both. And if they repent and improve, then let them be. Lo! Allah is ever relenting, 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 Of no effect is the repentance of those who continue to do evil, until death faces one of them, and he says, "Now have I repented indeed;" nor of those who die rejecting Faith: for them have We prepared a punishment most grievous. 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 ye wish to exchange one wife for another and ye have given unto one of them a sum of money (however great), take nothing from it. Would ye take it by the way of calumny and open wrong? 20 And how can ye take it back when one of you hath gone in unto the other, and they have obtained from you a rigid bond! 21 And marry not woman whom your fathers married, except what has already passed; this surely is indecent and hateful, and it is an evil way. 22