Another matter: “This is the matter [hadavar]” – that is what is written: “Forever, Lord, Your word [devarkha] stands in the heavens” (Psalms 119:89). Does the word of the Lord not stand on the earth, but only in the heavens? Rabbi Ḥizkiya bar Ḥiyya said: Because the Holy One blessed be He promised something in the heavens, and after two hundred and ten years the promise that the Holy One blessed be He promised to the righteous one was fulfilled.
How so? When the Holy One blessed be He said to Abraham: “Go from your land.… I will render you a great nation” (Genesis 12:1–2), he said before the Holy One blessed be He: ‘Master of the universe, what benefit do I have from all these blessings, when I am leaving this world without children?’ The Holy One blessed be He said to him: ‘Do you already know that you will not beget children?’ He said to Him: ‘Master of the universe, I see in my constellation that I will not beget children.’
He said to him: ‘Is it the constellation that you fear? As you live, just as it is impossible for a person to count the stars, so it will be impossible to count your descendants.’ Rabbi Yehuda ben Rabbi Simon said in the name of Rabbi Ḥanin: At that moment, the Holy One blessed be He lifted Abraham above the top of the firmament and said to him: “Look now to the heavens, and count the stars, if you could count them, and He said to him: So will be your descendants” (Genesis 15:5).
He said to him: ‘Just as you see these and you are unable to count them, so will your descendants be such that no person will be able to count them.’ Likewise you find regarding Jacob that the Holy One blessed be He promised him and said to him: “Your descendants will be like the dust of the earth [and you shall spread out to the west and to the east and to the north and to the south] (Genesis 28:14), and likewise, “I will descend with you to Egypt, and I will take you up again” (Genesis 46:4), and the Holy One blessed be He fulfilled it for him.
That is, “forever, Lord, Your word stands in the heavens” (Psalms 119:89). Likewise you find regarding Aaron that the Holy One blessed be He promised to Moses and said to him: “And you, draw Aaron your brother near to you” (Exodus 28:1). That is, “this is the matter that you shall do to them.”