In Genesis’s Noah’s Ark story, Noah was instructed to take seven pairs of clean animals.
Genesis 7:2 distinguishes clean animals from animals that were not clean. It tells Noah to take seven pairs of the clean animals, male and female, but only one pair of the animals that were not clean. The passage also specifies seven pairs of birds of the sky. This instruction appears immediately before the flood begins.
Many summaries say that Noah took one pair of every animal, because Genesis 6:19–20 gives a general instruction to bring male and female animals aboard. Genesis 7 adds the more detailed distinction, creating the familiar interpretive discussion about how the two passages fit together. The phrase “seven pairs” is therefore the specific answer for clean animals in Genesis 7, not a claim that every animal entered in seven pairs.