Yahweh said to me, "Go again, love a woman loved by another, and an adulteress, even as Yahweh loves the children of Israel, though they turn to other gods, and love cakes of raisins."
Chesed love is covenant loyalty and faithfulness. A covenant is an agreement between two parties that carries with it obligations and blessings. In the case of Hosea and Gomer, that covenant is the marriage covenant, and chesed is that particularly strong form of love by which the two persons in that covenant are bound to be loyal to each other. This idea forms a basic theme of the book of Hosea. God exercised loyal love and covenant faithfulness towards his people, but they were not loving and faithful to him in return. Their chesed ‘vanished like the morning mist’ (see 6:4-6).