R. Akiva says (Exodus 12:1) "saying": Go and say to them that it is in their merit that He speaks to me (Moses). And thus do we find, that in all the thirty-eight years that He was angry with Israel (i.e., from the episode of the spies and on), He did not speak with him, viz. (Devarim 2:16-17) And it was, when all the men of war (those from the age of twenty) had finished dying from the midst of the people, that the L–rd spoke to me, saying."