What Does Genesis 42:1 Mean?

When Jacob saw that there was grain in Egypt, he said to his sons, "Why do you look at one another?" The famine that has driven all the earth to Egypt (Genesis 41:57) has reached Canaan. Jacob's opening question: "Why do you look at one another?": catches his sons in the paralysis of inaction. They know about the grain in Egypt; they see each other; they do not move. The question is not rhetorical musing but a pointed observation of a father watching able-bodied men stand still in a crisis. The paralysis is not laziness; it is possibly the anxiety of men who know that Egypt means a reckoning with what they did twenty-two years ago. The last time they sold someone to a caravan headed to Egypt, the story did not end.

Jacob "saw" that there was grain in Egypt: the information was available; it had presumably reached the family through trade contacts or travelers. Jacob, the patriarch who has survived decades of resourcefulness, reads the information and acts on it. His sons do not. The contrast between Jacob's quickening mind (he sees, he speaks, he sends) and his sons' frozen paralysis is the chapter's opening characterization: the old father is more decisive than the young men who must make the journey. Perhaps what Jacob cannot see: because no one has told him: is the reason for his sons' hesitation.

"Why do you look at one another?" is the question that breaks the paralysis. It does not give the sons permission to go; it challenges them to explain their inaction. A father watching his household face famine while his sons stand still is a father who has already decided what should happen and is calling his sons to account for not having decided themselves. The journey to Egypt will begin because Jacob demands it: and it is the journey that will reunite the family with the son they sold, in ways none of them could have predicted.