In the initial instruction in Genesis, Noah is told to bring two of every kind of animal into the Ark. Genesis 6:19–20 describes a male and female of each kind entering the vessel so that life could be preserved.
A later passage creates a commonly discussed distinction. Genesis 7:2–3 instructs Noah to take seven pairs of clean animals and one pair of animals that are not clean, along with birds. Readers and scholars have proposed different ways to understand the relationship between these instructions, including seeing the later command as a more detailed addition to the earlier general instruction.
Because the question asks what God initially told Noah, the answer is two: one male and one female of each kind. The number seven belongs to the subsequent instructions concerning clean animals and birds, not to the first general statement.
The text uses its own category of “kind,” which should not automatically be equated with modern biological species. That distinction is another reason to state the biblical wording carefully.