Commentary for Leviticus 25:6

'והיתה שבת הארץ וגו‎‎‎‎ AND THE SABBATH OF THE LAND SHALL BE [FOOD FOR YOU] — Although I have forbidden them (the fruits of the sabbatical year) to you by stating “thou shalt not harvest etc.”, I do not mean to forbid them to you as food or to be used for any other beneficial purpose but what I meant was that you should not comport yourself in respect of them as the exclusive owner but all must be equal as regards it (the Sabbatical year’s produce) — you and your hired servant and your sojourner.

AND ‘SHABBATH HA’ARETZ’ (THE SABBATH-PRODUCE OF THE LAND) SHALL BE FOR FOOD FOR YOU. Because He said it shall be a Sabbath of solemn rest for the Land,¹¹¹Verse 4. He states [here] that the rest mentioned shall be for food for you to maintain all of you — you and your servant, and the cattle and the beast — so that you should all support yourselves from that which the land will bring forth by itself whilst it is resting. Or [it may be that] the year itself is called shabbath ha’aretz, just as the [seventh] day is called “the Sabbath of the Eternal,”¹¹²Above, 23:38: Beside the Sabbaths of the Eternal. or just “Sabbath;” and the reference thereof is to the produce of the Sabbath [year], for the Sabbath [year] itself is not something to be eaten.

והיתה שנת הארץ לכם לאכלה, "And the Sabbath-produce of the land shall be for you as food;" The principal reason for this verse is to inform us that contrary to other sacred matters which are restricted to the altar or to the priests, in this instance everybody is entitled to consume what has grown during the seventh year. The Torah then details who are all the people who are included in that permission. You may well ask that in view of this, why did the Torah have to write the word לכם, "to you," which is normally a restrictive word, i.e. "you and no one else?" All the Torah had to write was הארץ לך לאכלה! I suppose the best approach to this is as follows. Normally, I would have expected that whosoever is mentioned in the verse first is first in line for the permission to eat. We have a parallel to this when the Torah legislated the order of priorities when giving charity. In that instance (Deut. 15,7) The Torah lists: "your poor (family members)," followed by "the poor of your town," followed by the people in "your land" (based on Sifri on that verse). To ensure that we do not understand the last half of our verse in the same way as Deut. 15,7 the Torah here first wrote the word לכם to tell us that all people have an equal claim on what grows in the fields during that year.