It appears that /usr/lib/libdb-4.2.a in db4-devel-4.2.52-1 contains libtool .lo files instead of object files, thus making it useless.
Quite possibly, automake-1.8 has changed conventions incompatibly. Even so, you are unlikely to have much joy linking statically with a library that uses nptl. I tried -- hard -- in rpm and failed miserably. I doubt you will do much better. No way this is high severity. Yes it will be fixed.
Fixed in db4-4.2.52-2. Thanks for noticing.