It is a small verb and it does a great deal of work. He brought him forth without. Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on Genesis 15:5 keeps the gesture literal: the Lord brings Abraham outside the tent, outside the roof, outside every ceiling that might be standing between him and heaven.
Now look up. Now number the stars — if you are able.
The Targum lets that challenge sit the way it was meant to sit. Abraham, a man complaining moments earlier that he has no heir, is asked to perform an accounting that cannot be performed. How many stars? There is no final number. And that is the point. So also, the Lord says, will be the count of your sons.
The Maggid notices the sequence. First the complaint (Genesis 15:2). Then the removal from indoors. Only outside, under an unroofed sky, does the promise become visible at the right scale. A man stuck staring at his steward's face cannot imagine a nation. A man staring at the stars has no choice.
This is how the Lord answers Abraham's grief — not with a lecture but with a gesture. Step out. Look up. Your future is already burning over your head; you just needed to walk outside the tent to see it (Genesis 15:5). Sometimes the answer is not a new argument. Sometimes the answer is a different ceiling.