‘Hear the word of YHWH, you children of Israel, for YHWH has a controversy (legal grounds of dispute) with the inhabitants of the land, because there is no truth, nor covenant love, nor knowledge of God in the land.'
Hosea, addressing the ‘children of Israel' (Israel is to be their mother in Hosea 4:5), commences the passage by pointing out that he has received ‘the word of YHWH', and that it is a word that indicates that YHWH has a charge to lay against all who live in the land. Israel here indicates the northern kingdom. And the basis of the charge is rooted in the fact that there is no truth/truthfulness in the land and no compassion towards the poor and needy (chesed is love in accordance with the covenant). And underlying this is the lack of the knowledge of God in the land. Because they do not know God in all that He is, they are without truth and honesty, and without compassion. For God is the God of truth and compassion.
‘In the land.' Such was their lack of gratitude and appreciation of what He had done that they had no knowledge of God in the very land that God had given them as an inheritance. Thus the land would mourn (Hosea 4:3), and they themselves would finally be removed from the land because they no longer deserved it.