[Mesorah] coda for All that glitters may not be...

[Akiva Miller via Mesorah]

Rabbi Seth Mandel wrote:

<<< If the identity of n’hoshet were amatter of halokho l’doros, I am
sure we would have some evidence from Chazal or the rishonim what the
exact material was.  But, in fact, it makes no difference as far the
halokho goes for the BhM.  The Rambam states explicitly... >>>

Does it really make no difference?

The Rambam that you quoted gives two extremes: (1) All these keilim
are kosher as long as they're made of any kind of metal. (2) All these
keilim, if feasible, should be made of gold.

So I'm left wondering: If this is the halacha, then why did the Torah
bother to specify certain metals for any of these keilim?

The only answer that comes to my mind is that the Torah is telling us
the baseline, the middle road, which metals to use if the situation
neither requires kulos nor allows chumros. In which case, it *does*
matter exactly what the words include and exclude.

On a separate note: In a prior post, I noted that although the Torah
does use the phrase "zahav tahor" occasionally, it never describes
kesef or nechoshes as "tahor". Offlist, someone mentioned the phrase
"kesef tzaruf" to me, and I wondered if this might give us some clues.
Alas, although it is a familiar phrase (occurring several times in my
kesuba) it appears only once in all of Tanach (Tehillim 12:7). In
fact, the root tzadi-resh-peh appears only in Nach, and not in Torah.

Akiva Miller