In the biblical Noah’s Ark story, how many pairs of clean animals did Noah take aboard?

In the biblical Noah’s Ark story, Noah took seven pairs of clean animals aboard. Genesis 7:2 instructs him to take seven pairs of each clean animal, while also specifying one pair of animals that were not clean.

The passage is often summarized as “two of every kind,” because Genesis 6:19–20 gives a broader instruction to bring a male and female of each kind. Genesis 7 adds the more detailed distinction between clean and unclean animals. These passages are commonly discussed together, and translations differ slightly in how they phrase the number of clean animals.

The extra clean animals are connected with sacrifice: after leaving the ark, Noah builds an altar and offers burnt offerings from clean animals and birds. The account thus links the animal numbers with both preservation and worship, not simply with a general idea of animal pairs.