The famine reached Canaan, and Jacob's sons stood around doing nothing. Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on Genesis 42:1 preserves the old man's impatience in a single cutting line: "Why are you afraid to go down to Mizraim?"
The father reads his sons' faces
The Aramaic paraphrase, which took its final form in the Land of Israel around the seventh or eighth century CE, catches something the Hebrew understates. The sons are not merely hesitant. They are afraid. Rashi (1040-1105 CE), the great northern French Torah commentator, notes that the Hebrew word the brothers are shown is not simply "looking at each other" but "staring nervously" — the body language of guilty men. Why the fear? Because Egypt is where caravans pass, and the last caravan they sold a brother to (Genesis 37:28) was headed there. Egypt is the one country where Joseph might still be alive, and they know it.
A father who sees what the sons won't say
Jacob does not know what happened at the pit near Dothan. But he reads his sons well enough to see they are refusing a journey they should have already begun. His question is not rhetorical. It is paternal exasperation: the grain is in Egypt, we are starving in Canaan, and you are standing around. The Targum sharpens the rebuke.
The takeaway
Sometimes the conscience a person has been dodging speaks in the voice of an irritated parent asking why they won't take the obvious road.