Did Noah take two of every kind of animal into the ark, or seven of the clean kinds?

Genesis 6 gives the general rule and Genesis 7 the fuller instruction. In 6:19–20, when the ark is first commanded, God says that every kind is to be kept alive in pairs, “male and female”. A week before the flood (7:1–4) Noah is told more exactly: of the clean animals, and of the birds, he is to take seven (Hebrew shiv‘ah shiv‘ah, ‘by sevens’), and of the unclean animals, a pair. The extra clean animals had a purpose, for after the flood Noah offered burnt offerings “of every clean beast, and of every clean fowl” (8:20), and a single pair could not have spared any. The later command adds to the first; it does not cancel it.

Genesis 7:8–9 describes how the animals came: “There went in two and two unto Noah into the ark, the male and the female”. They entered in pairs, which is true whether a kind sent one pair or several. Keil and Delitzsch saw no sign here of two clashing accounts.

Two sources

Critical scholars often assign 6:19–20 and 7:2–3 to different sources. Keil and Delitzsch answered that the distinction between clean and unclean animals is older than Moses, and that the passage reads as one account.

The Hebrew ‘seven seven’ may mean seven of each clean kind or seven pairs. Keil and Delitzsch took it as three pairs and one more, probably for sacrifice; the ESV and BSB read seven pairs. Interpreters still differ.